What is the role of the senses in how we understand the world? Cognitive sociology has long addressed the way we perceive or imagine boundaries in our ordinary lives, but this book pushes this ...
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What is the role of the senses in how we understand the world? Cognitive sociology has long addressed the way we perceive or imagine boundaries in our ordinary lives, but this book pushes this question further still. How, it asks, did we come to blind ourselves to sex sameness? Drawing on more than sixty interviews with two decidedly different populations—the blind and the transgendered—it answers provocative questions about the relationships between sex differences, biology, and visual perception. Both groups speak from unique perspectives that magnify the social construction of dominant visual conceptions of sex, allowing the author to examine the visual construction of the sexed body and highlighting the processes of social perception underlying our everyday experience of male and female bodies. The result is a notable contribution to the sociologies of gender, culture, and cognition that will revolutionize the way we think about sex.Less

Blind to Sameness : Sexpectations and the Social Construction of Male and Female Bodies

Asia Friedman

Published in print: 2013-07-15

What is the role of the senses in how we understand the world? Cognitive sociology has long addressed the way we perceive or imagine boundaries in our ordinary lives, but this book pushes this question further still. How, it asks, did we come to blind ourselves to sex sameness? Drawing on more than sixty interviews with two decidedly different populations—the blind and the transgendered—it answers provocative questions about the relationships between sex differences, biology, and visual perception. Both groups speak from unique perspectives that magnify the social construction of dominant visual conceptions of sex, allowing the author to examine the visual construction of the sexed body and highlighting the processes of social perception underlying our everyday experience of male and female bodies. The result is a notable contribution to the sociologies of gender, culture, and cognition that will revolutionize the way we think about sex.

This chapter discusses the coverage of this volume which is about envisioning the worst. Building on theories and ideas forwarded by both cultural and cognitive sociologists, this chapter argues that ...
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This chapter discusses the coverage of this volume which is about envisioning the worst. Building on theories and ideas forwarded by both cultural and cognitive sociologists, this chapter argues that the inability to envision and specify the worst is, in part, a sociocultural phenomenon. It explains that the worst can become a perceptual blind spot, obscured or blurred by a variety of routine and patterned sociocultural practice and this makes it hard to define. This chapter also provides a summary of the chapters in this volume.Less

What's the Worst That Could Happen?

Karen A. Cerulo

Published in print: 2006-09-14

This chapter discusses the coverage of this volume which is about envisioning the worst. Building on theories and ideas forwarded by both cultural and cognitive sociologists, this chapter argues that the inability to envision and specify the worst is, in part, a sociocultural phenomenon. It explains that the worst can become a perceptual blind spot, obscured or blurred by a variety of routine and patterned sociocultural practice and this makes it hard to define. This chapter also provides a summary of the chapters in this volume.

This book explores the relationship between money and work, with particular emphasis on how the workplace shapes our attitudes toward money and other finance-related matters. It considers the ...
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This book explores the relationship between money and work, with particular emphasis on how the workplace shapes our attitudes toward money and other finance-related matters. It considers the different types of “cognitive work” (efforts to conceive of the meaning of money and work in particular ways) and the different types of “emotion work” (efforts to manage one's emotions about money) that emerge from the structured and patterned association between job and money. It shows how the cognitive and emotion work that is needed to perform certain jobs creates specific money cultures—beliefs and practices about money that are socially transmitted. It also examines how distinct money cultures develop out of the quotidian practices and socialization experiences that occur at work. The book argues that our work plays a very important role in shaping the way we come to think of money and even affects our lives outside of work—an approach that it refers to as a cognitive economic sociology of money and work.Less

Introduction : Thinking about Money

Kevin J. Delaney

Published in print: 2012-07-16

This book explores the relationship between money and work, with particular emphasis on how the workplace shapes our attitudes toward money and other finance-related matters. It considers the different types of “cognitive work” (efforts to conceive of the meaning of money and work in particular ways) and the different types of “emotion work” (efforts to manage one's emotions about money) that emerge from the structured and patterned association between job and money. It shows how the cognitive and emotion work that is needed to perform certain jobs creates specific money cultures—beliefs and practices about money that are socially transmitted. It also examines how distinct money cultures develop out of the quotidian practices and socialization experiences that occur at work. The book argues that our work plays a very important role in shaping the way we come to think of money and even affects our lives outside of work—an approach that it refers to as a cognitive economic sociology of money and work.